In the arts and crafts field, it is often necessary and/or desirable to add a specific texture to a piece of material, be it cardstock, paper, vellum or other materials. One conventional system for adding a texture to a material involves placing a “texture plate” under the sheet of material to be manipulated, after which the user uses a stylus or similar hard object to press the material against the texture plate. This action causes the material to obtain a texture substantially identical to the texture that exists on the texture plate.
Although moderately useful, the above prior art method and others for adding a texture to a sheet of material have several significant drawbacks. First, using a stylus or similar implement can be difficult to control, resulting in the user inadvertently adding texture to portions of the material that he or she did not intend. Second, if the user presses too hard with the stylus against the sheet of material, the material could be torn, scratched or otherwise defaced in an undesirable manner. Additionally, a stylus or similar implement often results in an uneven texture being applied to the material, due to different pressures being applied in different locations. Furthermore, if the texture-inducing implement does not fall squarely into an individual crevice or dimple, the embossed texture will not be of an extremely high quality, resulting in an inferior overall appearance to the embossment.